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Companies invest in SAP Integrated B2B sell-side eCommerce websites for two reasons.  Either they want to: (1) provide their customers a better order management experience or (2) they want to save on internal processing costs.

Three of my earlier posts dealt with improving customer service.  Read “We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Website“, “Walk In Your Customer’s Shoes” or “AMR Benchmarks the Value of Sellside eCommerce” for more on the value side of the equation.

Over the last several months we’ve gotten a lot of first hand knowledge about where the costs savings come from when you implement our real time integrated SAP B2B sell-side eCommerce website service.  Today we’ll begin those discussions.

The bottom line is that entering an order into your SAP system is too difficult.  Check out all the yellow sticky notes in your Customer Service Reps (CSR) cubicles.  Those are all “work-arounds” for bad data or missing processes in your SAP system.  Seems as if it’s easier to train your CSRs to execute these workarounds than to get your IT organization to fix them once and for all.

That’s why you need a bank of Customer Service Reps.  What should be a simple process has devolved into a complex one that takes time to deal with. CSRs have accumulated all of the tribal knowledge required to place a well formed order into your SAP system.  They know that when a customer asks for Product A, they really need to get Product B because Product A hasn’t been available for months but it hasn’t been discontinued in SAP yet.  Your CSR’s know that since you don’t have ATP set up to check all of your warehouses for inventory they have to manually check each of them before you apologize to your customer for being out of stock.

The more orders you take, the more CSRs you need.  Unless you commit to eliminate the process waste embedded in your CSR’s tribal knowledge, the situation will never improve.  Therein lies the secret to our success.  A commitment to making your SAP system transparent to your customers is a commitment to cleaning it up.  And a commitment to cleaning up your SAP system is a commitment to sustainable cost savings.

If you are going to open your Kimono, you better look good!

In my earlier post entitled “Are You Hiring?“, I presented the thinly veiled results of our experiences with Nordson/EFD.  Within 60 days of going into production we were able to free up at least 2 CSRs from their routine order management responsibilities. That inspired me to put together this cost savings calculator.

This should help us start the discussion of how much cost savings you can expect once you decide to integrate our B2B sell-side eCommerce service with your SAP system.

Insert values into the yellow cells and read your potential cost savings in the green cells.  Embedded in this model are some of our learnings of the past several months:

1. For every order placed on the web, customers come back 3 more times to check on status, track the delivery or download relevant documents.
2. Orders don’t have to be placed on the web in order to be tracked on the web.
3. The time to “enter” and order isn’t just “typing” time.  It’s the time required to research the order, fix issues with the order, have discussions with the customer etc.
4. It really shouldn’t take more than 60 days from project start to first production order taken over the web.

Like any other model, this one probably produces more questions than provides answers.  But it’s a start and hopefully provides you some value…and that’s the Agile point.  Start delivering value as soon as you can and find ways to deliver more of it over time.

Sam

BRINGING TEMPORARY ORDER TO CHAOTIC IT PROJECTS

by Sam Bayer

My wife and I have a technique we use to ensure that
we stay focused on completing our household to-do
list. We throw a party.

Several years ago, when we bought our present house,
we knew that if we scheduled a party for two months
after move-in day, things would get done. We would
never allow ourselves to be embarrassed by a
half-painted kitchen, unpacked boxes, unadorned
walls, and a “sound system-less” house. Without the
scheduled party, we could — and would — always find
something more interesting to do.

Deadlines have a way of focusing the mind.

Throwing a party addresses two key problem areas for
us: motivation and scope. First and foremost, the
party positively motivates us to get things done.
Somehow, the mountain of tasks before us seems less
daunting when we have the excitement of a party to
look forward to. Second, having an immovable date on
the calendar helps us control the scope of our
efforts. We know that we can’t get everything done
within the allotted time, nor can it all be perfectly
done within the allotted budget. Given the
constraints, we’re forced to make the best possible
decisions and move on.

And then there is the day of the party. With glass of
wine in hand, music in the background, and enveloped
by the cacophony of conversation, we always find a
moment to appreciate what we’ve accomplished to date
and get a clearer vision of what has to be done next.
We relish our moment of tranquility within our
chaotic world, even if it is only for a moment.

You can view launching IT projects similarly.

On the day you kick off a project, the incredible
number of tasks that have to be defined, coordinated,
and accomplished before you declare victory can be
overwhelming. The checklists are many and varied. It
starts with all the people and meetings required to
get agreement on the product’s goals and
requirements. Development has to manage the myriad
engineering tasks of designing, developing, testing,
managing change requests, and version control.
Marketing has to produce all of the literature and
communications to support the rollout of the product.
The training, customer support, and services
departments have to make sure that they’re ready to
support the client once the product ships. The tasks
are many, complex, and intertwined.

From the moment a project starts, we find ourselves
fighting against the second law of thermodynamics –
the one that says that systems left alone will tend
to migrate toward a state of maximum entropy. Every
department tries to optimize its own performance and
minimize its dependency on the others. Like the game
of musical chairs, no one wants to be left standing
when the music stops. Somewhere along the way, the
collective goal of delivering something of value to
our customer was replaced by: “Make sure you can
always blame the project’s delays on someone else.”
Chaos reigns.

What’s a project manager to do? Throw a party.

Schedule a customer focus group (CFG) that will
unite, align, and motivate your project team to rise
above their individual perspectives and rally around
the customer. A CFG is a facilitated event where
actual customers (not customer surrogates) react to a
working demonstration of your whole product.

Everyone benefits by preparing for, and attending, a
CFG. The host (project sponsor) gets to see how
effectively his or her development dollars are being
spent, and more importantly, observes the customer’s
reactions firsthand.

By viewing a scenario-based demonstration of the
proposed solution, the project manager gets to gauge
real progress against the project plan. Did we
deliver everything we said we would? If we didn’t,
why not?

The development team has a meaningful event to
prepare for. The CFG isn’t a contrived vehicle
designed to update management that only “wastes”
precious development resources. It’s a chance to
engage with real users who can validate assumptions
and directly answer specific questions.

Members of other support organizations (e.g.,
marketing, training, customer support) get to test
their deliverables and get client input to steer
their pending efforts.

Last, but not least, customers love participating in
CFGs. Why wouldn’t they? They get to be the center of
attention for a change. They’re treated like royalty,
as opposed to victims, and get to do what they do
best — voice their opinions in a penalty-free
environment.

The magic of the CFG is in watching everything come
together for the event. For an all-too-brief moment
in time, what appeared like an amalgamation of
disconnected and chaotic efforts coalesces as a team
effort with a collective purpose: “Customers are
coming in to view a demonstration. We all have to
prepare and make sure that their time is put to good
use!”

Once you’ve set the date for your CFG, things start
to resemble our house party scenario. The project
team has to make a decision about their equivalents
of every unpacked box. Should we unpack it, put a
cloth over it, hide it in a closet, throw it out, or
be prepared to make excuses for it? You can’t just
leave it hanging around. By the end of the CFG, you
will probably even uncover a couple of boxes that
were missing as well.

And through it all, you can always count on that
quiet moment in the middle of the CFG itself, when
you come to the realization that you’ve pulled it
off. Everyone came together, focused on what
mattered, and produced a pretty smooth show. Your
customers have confirmed that you’re on the right
track and have gladly given you the inevitable
suggestions that put their signatures on the overall
project. Everything is under control. Until tomorrow
morning that is, when you have to start planning for
your next CFG.

–Sam Bayer, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium